PREFACE
Part One
The Future Perfect
I. Salute to the reader in a hurry--A resignation in 1875--Birds of ill omen--How the nineteenth century closed the doors--The end of science and the repression of fantasy--Poincaré’s despair--We are our own grandfathers--Youth, Youth!
II. Bourgeois delights--A crisis for the intelligence, or the hurricane of unrealism--Glimpses of another reality--Beyond logic and literary philosophies--The idea of an Eternal Present--Science without conscience or conscience without science?--Hope
III. Brief reflections on the backwardness of sociology--Talking cross-purposes--Planetary versus provincial--Crusader in the modern world--The poetry of science
An Open Conspiracy
I. The generation of the “workers of the Earth”--Are you a behind-the-times modern, or a contemporary of the future?--A poster on the walls of Paris 1622--The esoteric language is the technical language--A new conception of a secret society--A new aspect of the “religious spirit”
II. The prophets of the Apocalypse--A Committee of Despair--A Louis XVI machine-gun--Science is not a Sacred Cow--Monsieur Despotopoulos would like to arrest progress--The legend of the Nine Unknown Men
III. Fantastic realism again--Past techniques--Further consideration on the necessity for secrecy--We take a voyage through time--The spirit’s continuity--The engineer and the magician once again--Past and future--The present is lagging in both directions--Gold from ancient books--A new vision of the ancient world
IV. The concealment of knowledge and power--The meaning of revolutionary war--Technology brings back the guilds--A return to the age of the Adepts--A fiction writer’s prediction, “The Power-House”--From monarchy to cryptocracy--The secret society as the government of the future--Intelligence itself a secret society--A knocking at the door
The Example of Alchemy
I. An alchemist in the Café Procope in 1953--A conversation about Gurdjieff--A believer in the reality of the philosopher’s stone--I change my ideas about the value of progress--What we really think about alchemy: neither a revelation nor a groping in the dark--Some reflections on the “spiral” and on hope
II. A hundred thousand books that no one reads--Wanted: a scientific expedition to the land of the alchemists--The inventors--Madness from mercury--A code language--Was there another atomic civilization?--The electric batteries of the museum of Baghdad--Newton and the great Initiates--Helvetius and Spinoza and the philosopher’s stone--Alchemy and modern physics--A hydrogen bomb in an oven--Transformation of matter, men, and spirits
III. In which a little Jew is seen to prefer honey to sugar--In which an alchemist who might be the mysterious Fulcanelli speaks of the atomic danger in 1937, describes the atomic pile and evokes civilization now extinct--In which Bergier breaks a safe with a blow-lamp and carries off a bottle of uranium under his arm--In which a nameless American major seeks a Fulcanelli now definitely vanished--In which Oppenheimer echoes a Chinese sage of a thousand years ago
IV. The modern alchemist and the spirit of research--Description of what an alchemist does in his laboratory--Experiments repeated indefinitely--What is he waiting for?--The preparation of darkness--Electronic gas--Water that dissolves--Is the philosopher’s stone energy in suspension?-- The transmutation of the alchemist himself --This is where true metaphysics begin
V. There is time for everything--There is even a time for the times to come together
The Vanished Civilizations
I. In which the authors introduce a fantastic personage--Mr. Fort--The fire at the “sanatorium of overworked coincidences”--Mr. Fort and universal knowledge--40,000 notes on a gush of periwinkles, a downpour of frogs and showers of blood--The Book of the Damned--A certain Professor Kreyssler--In praise of “intermediarism” with some examples--The Hermit of Bronx, or the cosmic Rabelais--Visit of the author to the Cathedral of Saint Elsewhere--Au revoir, Mr. Fort!
II. An hypothesis condemned to the stake--Where a clergyman and a biologist become comic figures--Wanted: a Copernicus in anthropology--Many blank spaces on all the maps--Dr. Fortune’s lack of curiosity--The mystery of the melted platinum--Cords used as books--The tree and the telephone--Cultural relativity
III. In which the authors speculate about the Great Pyramid--Possibility of “other” techniques--The example of Hitler--The Empire of Almanzar--Recurrence of “ends of the world”--The impossible Easter Island--The legend of the white man--The civilization of America--The mystery of maya--From the “bridge of light” to the strange plain of Nazca
IV. Memory older than us--Metallic birds--A strange map of the world--Atomic bombardments and interplanetary vessels in “sacred texts”--A new view of machines--The cult of the “cargo”--Another vision of esoterism--The rites of the intelligence
Part Two
A Few Years in the Absolute Elsewhere
I. All the marbles in the same bag--The historian’s despair--Two amateurs of the unusual--At the bottom of the Devil’s Lake--An empty antifascism--The authors in the presence of the Infinitely Strange--Troy, too, was only a legend--History lags behind--From visible banality to invisible fantasy--The fable of the golden beetle--Undercurrents of the future--There are other things besides soulless machinery
II. In the Tribune des Nations the Devil and madness are refused recognition--Yet there are rivalries between deities--The Germans and Atlantis--Magic socialism--A secret religion and a secret Order--An expedition to hidden regions--The first guide will be a poet
III. P. J. Toulet and Arthur Machen--A great neglected genius--A Robinson Crusoe of the soul--The story of the angels at Mons--The life, adventures, and misfortunes of Arthur Machen--How we discovered an English secret society--A Nobel Prize winner in a black mask--The Golden Dawn and its members
IV. A hollow Earth, a frozen world, a New Man--“We are the enemies of the mind and spirit”--Against Nature and against God--The Vril Society--The race which will supplant us--Haushofer and the Vril--The idea of the mutation of man--The “Unknown Superman”--Mathers, chief of the Golden Dawn meets the “Great Terrorists”--Hitler claims to have met them too--An hallucination or a real presence?--A door opening on to something other--A prophecy of René Guénon--The Nazis’ enemy No. 1: Steiner
V. An ultimatum for the scientists--The prophet Horbiger, a twentieth-century Copernicus--The theory of the frozen world--History of the solar system--The end of the world--The Earth and its four Moons--Apparition of the giants--Moons, giants, and men--The civilization of Atlantis--The five cities 300,000 years old--From Tiahuanaco to Tibet--The second Atlantis--The Deluge--Degeneration and Christianity--We are approaching another era--The law of ice and fire
VI. Horbiger still has a million followers--Waiting for the Messiah--Hitler and political esoterism--Nordic science and magic thinking--A civilization utterly different from our own--Gurdjieff, Horbiger, Hitler, and the man responsible for the Cosmos--The cycle of fire--Hitler speaks--The basis of Nazi anti-Semitism--Martians at Nuremberg--The antipact--The rockets’ summer--Stalingrad, or the fall of the Magi--The prayer on Mount Elbruz--The little man victorious over the superman--The little man opens the gates of Heaven--The Twilight of the Gods--The flooding of the Berlin Underground and the myth of the Deluge--A Chorus by Shelley
VII. A hollow Earth--We are living inside it--The Sun and Moon are in the center of the Earth--Radar in the service of the Wise Men--Birth of a new religion in America—Its prophet was a German airman--Anti-Einstein--The work of a madman--A hollow Earth, Artificial Satellites and the notion of Infinity--Hitler as arbiter--Beyond coherence
VIII. Grist for our horrible mill--The last prayer of Dietrich Eckardt--The legend of Thule--A nursery for mediums--Haushofer the magician--Hess’s silence--The swastika--The seven men who wanted to change life--A Tibetan colony--Exterminations and ritual--It is darker than you thought
IX. Himmler and the other side of the problem--1934 a turning point--The Black Order in power--The death’s-head warrior monks--Initiation in the Burgs--Sievers’ last prayer--The strange doings of the Ahnenerbe--The High Priest Frederick Hielscher--A forgotten note of Jünger’s--Impressions of war and victory
Part Three
That Infinity Called Man . . .
I. A New Kind of Intuition: The Fantastic in fire and blood--The barriers of incredulity--The first rocket--Bourgeois and “Workers of the Earth”--False facts and true fiction--Inhabited worlds--Visitors from Beyond--The great lines of communication--Modern myths--Fantastic realism in psychology--Toward an exploration of the fantastic within--The method described-- Another conception of liberty
II. The Fantastic Within: Some pioneers: Balzac, Hugo, Flammarion--Jules Romains and the “Great Question”--The end of positivism--What is parapsychology?--Some extraordinary facts and experiences--The example of the Titanic--Clairvoyance --Precognition and dreams--Parapsychology and psychoanalysis--We reject occultism and the pseudosciences--In quest of machinery for sounding the depths
III. Toward a Psychological Revolution: The mind’s “second wind”--Wanted: an Einstein for psychology--A renaissance of religion--Our society is at death’s door--Jaurès and the “tree buzzing with flies”--We see little because we are little
IV. The Magic Mind Rediscovered: The green eye of the Vatican--The “other” intelligence--The story of the “relavote”--Is Nature playing a double game?--The starting-handle of the supermachine --New cathedrals and new slang--The last door--Existence as an instrument--A new view of symbols--All is not everything
V. The Notion of an “Awakened State”: After the fashion of theologians, scientists, magicians, and children--Salute to an expert at putting spokes in wheels--The conflict between spiritualism and materialism: the story of an allergy--The legend of tea--Could it be a natural faculty?--Thought as a means of travel on the ground or in the air--A supplement to the Rights of Man--Some reflections on the “awakened” Man--Ourselves as honest savages
VI. Three True Stories as Illustration: The story of a great mathematician “in the raw”--The story of the most wonderful clairvoyant--The story of a scientist of the future who lived in 1750
VII. The “Awakened” Man: Some Paradoxes and Hypotheses: Why our three stories may have disappointed some readers--We know very little about levitation, immortality, etc.--Yet Man has the gift of ubiquity, has long sight, etc.--How do you define a machine?--How the first “awakened” Man could have been born--A fabulous, yet reasonable dream about vanished civilizations--The fable of the panther--The writing of God
VIII. Some Documents on the “Awakened State”: Wanted: an anthology--The sayings of Gurdjieff--When I was at the school for “awakening”-- Raymond Abellio’s story--A striking extract from the works of Gustav Meyrinck, a neglected genius
IX. The Point Beyond Infinity: From Surrealism to Fantastic Realism--The Supreme Point--Beware of images--The madness of Georg Cantor--The Yogi and the mathematician--A fundamental aspiration of the human spirit--An extract from a story by Jorge Luis Borges
X. Some Reflections on the Mutants: The child astronomer--A sudden access of intelligence--The theory of mutation--The myth of the great Superior Ones--The Mutants among us--From Horla to Leonard Euler--An invisible society of Mutants?--The birth of the collective being--Love of the living
INDEX
